5. Ann Coulter Controversy

Ann Coulter has a way with words – and on Twitter those words seem to frequently get her into trouble. In a rant on Twitter in late October, Coulter referred to President Obama as “retarded” not once, but twice. As expected, Twitter went into an uproar, demanding that Coulter apologize for such offensive remarks. In typical Coulter fashion, criticism was met with defiance: “Look, no one would refer to a Down Syndrome child, someone with an actual mental handicap, by saying ‘retard.’ Where do you think the words ‘imbecile,’ ‘idiot,’ ‘moron,’ ‘cretin’ come from? These were all technical terms at one time. ‘Retard’ had been used colloquially to just mean ‘loser’ for 30 years.” In response, a Special Olympics athlete named John Franklin Stephens wrote an open letter to Ann Coulter that was shared widely across social media: “Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.”